


i hope we both die / epilogue

by mcmotzkin



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Ronan is canonically an asshole, Vague Tenderness, but he's trying as well, even Declan, they're doing their best, they're very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 04:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7602667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmotzkin/pseuds/mcmotzkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'2/5 of a whole may not be a lot but it's better than one' or<br/>'Blue and Ronan didn't get the memo about moving on'</p>
            </blockquote>





	i hope we both die / epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> I started this in March and could not get the exposition part right. I still don't like it, but I just have to publish at this point.
> 
> *The end notes are spoilers. If you’ve read trk go there before the fic, pls.

 

In the end nothing turned out like they had hoped. Obviously,  _ obviously _ .

 

The King rose from his grave of mud and dead leaves, flesh growing over bones before their eyes, staring at what seemed to be each of them at once. He seemed larger than he really was, and incredible, and terrifying. And he did save Gansey, as they asked, only it was two years beforehand, surrounded by trees and angry insects, whispering into the boy’s ringing ears - “ _ Glendower. _ ”

 

When he flickered back into their time, they had stared at him in horrified comprehension and no words came out, none formed in their minds. He took pity, ”Had I not saved him then, he would not be here now.”

 

“Dying.” Blue whispered.

 

“That is what mortals do. Children- go to your homes, grieve for your friend, and forget about magic.”

 

No book wrote about it, no descendant ever passed it down from mouth to ear to bedtime story, not explicitly. They should have seen it, of course; you cannot live so long and be human, and what is a non-human creature that lives forever and grants wishes? What are the Raven King and his insane daughter? They could only be Fae.

 

You do not play games with the fae.

 

So now Gansey was dead, Noah was gone, at peace at last or at least they hoped so. And Adam became a magical forest. There were only Blue and Ronan now, left to feel the brunt of that intense and encompassing love. How could they possibly let each other go?

 

-

 

Mornings start with Blue retracting her arms from around Ronan’s waist, her knees from the hollow soft underparts of his knees, her belly from his back. She stretches, releasing the knacks from her back, letting the blood flow back to her limbs; turns off the alarm.

 

It’s a heavy thing to bear, the whole weight of a five-person love on just two pairs of sloped, bitter shoulders. They stay together, they can’t afford not to.

 

Some nights are harder than they can bear, and Blue sits a silent bruise-eyed vigil over her friend, holding a hand to some exposed body part, ready to pinch at the slightest sign of a dream-thing birth. They used to think it was impossible for the two of them to spend an unguarded night in each other’s company- in fact, their first ever night in the same bed was spent gazing at the ceiling and walls and windows, too terrified to sleep. But Blue doesn’t amplify his dreams, it turns out, she doesn’t make the nightmares bigger or stronger or more quick to come. She has no effect on them at all. Instead she holds Ronan like a safety belt and they fall asleep as safe as they can ever get.

 

He still has nightmares and though he has learned to control most of their manifestations, some things get through, raging and ugly, the exact color of their own loathing and angers and doubts. How many people can say they had literally fought their inner demons? Sometimes Blue laughs when it’s done- a little hysterical, a little relieved.

 

She acquires some scars of her own.

 

-

 

If they weren’t busy envying each other back when they met, they would surely have gotten along like a house on fire. They would  _ be  _ the fire. Bitter and guarded and tough as rocks, they both had soft underbellies that they tried their hardest not to leave exposed.

 

So of course in the end they were left empty and swimming in guts.

 

-

 

Everyone tells Blue to prepare herself for pain, because high school friendships don’t last forever. You will get into different colleges, they say; you will drift apart as you discover new interests and friends, you will fall in love. Learn to let things go.

 

Intellectually she knows it is possible except, of course, for her it’s never been an option. Not since a graveyard and a whispered name. She wonders sometimes how it might feel like to move on- but draws up a blank. Pointless musings to pass the time when the clientele is scarce and there’s no one to see her shudder.

 

-

 

 

A home with Ronan Lynch in it it a house of silent tribute, a church of their very own, like he can’t help but offer his life and his space to something beyond him. The windowsills of all three of their windows are facing inwards and the whole length of each one houses containers with mint plants. He waters them once every two days with filtered water. Roughly a third of his shirts were from Adam’s closet; those that were too thin and worn to be used as clothing he wears to sleep, looking as soft as she could ever remember him being. More than she could allow herself to be.

 

There was a week that summer when the five of them gathered around a small laptop in Monmouth and made a mix of songs for Noah to listen to, each laughingly suggesting hits from the wrong years or styles that he’d never heard of. Noah was almost  _ there _ , she remembered, almost solid at her back, laughing with his head back or pouting at Gansey’s gentle mocking.

 

Ronan listens to this mix as often as he does to his own music. Sometimes this devotion unsettles Blue; how she can’t imagine him ten, twenty years from now without these tidbits of memories, those object from people long gone. Holding on to bones.

 

But then she remembers that she has a set of keys to the Pig in her pocket and a receipt for a full tank of fuel from last Thursday; she remembers that she made a collage of Adam’s (Persephone’s before that) Tarot deck, had it neatly framed, and now it hangs above the table in the kitchen she shares with the last of her Raven Boys. Her devotion is no less frightening or strong.

 

-

 

Loving Blue is a soft, private thing. It’s taking the passenger seat every time, once he’d taught her to drive the Pig. It’s following her wherever she chooses to settle them; any college in any town or city. It’s not holding her hand.

 

He follows her from class to library to lunch, never a step behind her, but following nonetheless. He sits with her between classes and discusses rock formations, feeding small pieces of bread to Chainsaw who follows them from home and hangs out somewhere on the roofs of the campus until she spots them leaving to eat, or at the end of the day, at which point she joins them landing carefully on one of their shoulders, feathers brushing a cheek.

 

He washes the sink after he shaves, does the dishes, navigates the groceries cart while she chooses food; relaxes from the bones to the tips of his hair when she holds him at night.

 

Sometimes his shift ends before hers does - taking care of small fragile things while she serves coffee to assholes- so he comes to the shop and sits quietly in her line of vision waiting for that small moment when she sees him and her eyes become less vacant and her shoulders less tense.

 

Her hair is growing long. He never calls her Jane.

 

Kissing the crook of her neck, her hands, Ronan knows that he will never be able to be without her: loud and spiky, opinionated, guarded and bruised from years before. If  _ she’s  _ taken from him as well then he will dream himself into Cabeswater and never come out.

 

The mint plants die come winter.

 

-

 

Moving away from Henrietta was something like chewing off your arm hoping the infection won’t spread; agonizing and tinged with hopelessness. They had a feeling, standing in Cabeswater’s timeless, living body, shoulders touching- that if they stay here they will  _ die _ . And yes, the pain of their loss was as heavy as a boulder, but as it happens they were, the both of them, made with a core of defiance and anger and this town  _ will not kill them _ , this forest will  _ not  _ eat them alive. Without really talking about it they packed and left.

 

(Ronan drove alone to Adam’s apartment, stole away as many of his things as he could, then collapsed on the shitty mattress and broke down in sobs into the thin, lumpy pillow for close to thirty minutes. Everything smelled like motor oil.)

 

(Blue came home to packed bags in the narrow hallway, but still she made a last tour of her bedroom to see if there’s anything she’d have liked to take that her family wouldn’t think of. Living with psychics means she didn’t have to give a few day’s warning. They probably knew about her departure before  _ she  _ did, so she didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t even see most of them, not that she wanted to; especially not her mother with her love triangle. God, she was tired.)

 

They got a small apartment and signed up to the same community college. Agriculture and Green Economy; Ronan had copied her application and course schedule like it was a test.

  
  


 

Students with part-time jobs; a pet shop for him, a barista for her. Safe, ordinary lives.

 

Once every two months, if their weekends permit it, they take the Pig to Cabeswater with a soft aquamarine blanket and a cooler with various foods, greeting Mrs. Lynch, sunny Matthew, and whoever from her side of the family that had seen her coming and decided to join. These are always soft, singing days, and she settles heavily between Ronan’s legs, her back to his chest, or puts her head in his lap so he will thread long fingers through her hair; listens to the familiar voices of  _ family _ , and allows herself to be happy.

 

When they leave Ronan always whispers to the trees in Latin, “ _ Let us go let us go let us go _ ”, half remembered fears in the angle of his wrist, the speed of his pace; a nervous hand on the nape of his neck, the edges of his tattoo moving in the corner of her eye. They always leave unscathed, and she doesn’t know if it has anything to do with Cabeswater’s affections for its frightened Greywaren with his muttered gentle words, or if it simply doesn’t care about two insignificant children; and anyway, she loves him.

 

-

 

She talks to  _ Declan  _ about children, not Ronan. He proposes in a carefully calloused tone to let the Lynch gene die, and dream things with it. It’s colored with so much fear she can see it like a filter applied to his Skype screen. He doesn’t want his kid to die with their brains on the pavement. “Do you not want children?”, he asks and Ronan does not move from his heavy-limbed sprawl face down on the bed behind her, only Chainsaw turns her head to show they both are paying rapt attention. The three of them are skilled at covert communication.

 

“No.”, she looks at where Declan’s eyes are on her screen, hesitant and so young, she sometimes forgets he’s not that much older than her, “I don’t think I’m ready to love someone as much as I love-”, she takes a breath and finishes, “him.” - and almost says  _ them _ .

 

Ronan is motionless on the bed while his brother averts his eyes on the screen, momentarily uncomfortable like he always is with the intensity of their feelings.

 

“Why do I have to do everything in this family?”

 

Blue takes it as goodbye, rolls her eyes and grins at him before hanging up the call. She turns off the screen and walks over to the bed to curl herself around whatever part of her favourite Lynch brother she can reach. He pushes his hands under her shirt and lets out a small sigh of contentment he rarely permits himself. They don’t talk about it.

 

-

  
  


A course-mandated week apart in different parts of the country turns them into frantic, cornered beasts. When they finally reunite in the dimly lit comfort of their little apartment, Ronan puts his shaved head in Blue’s lap, tucks his nose under the hem of her shirt and says very quietly,

 

“Maggot, let’s never do it again,” and Blue runs a hand over the soft short hairs near his ear and says, just as quietly, “Yeah.”

 

When a day later Ronan suggests, in the way he has of asking things without sounding the question mark, that they get matching tattoos - she simply says yes and frets with him over the design.

 

They end up with two snakes, coiled protectively and tightly over each other - right on their sternums. Of course, being dream-things the drawings sometimes move and change and emit warmth for yet unknown reasons. It feels like comfort.

  
  
  


So aside from the panic attacks at the thought of separation, this co-dependency thing is working out pretty great for them.

 

-

 

Ronan dreams about a life where he’d left Adam alone; been less of a shithead, let him sleep, let him study. He dreams of silky-soft skin under the other’s eyes and dark from lack of reast. He wakes up to his own selfishness and tear tracks.

 

Blue secretly thinks she’d rather not have met Gansey at all if that kept him alive.

 

-

  
  


Sometimes Ronan isn’t even sure it’s worth it, all of it; being good, being kind, trying so goddamn hard, but he sees her fight- small, angry Blue Sargent. She buries herself in long shifts and essays, puts her lips to the space between his shoulderblades, doesn’t punch douchebags; wakes up  _ every morning _ .

 

She helps him shave his head and writes regular e-mails to Declan.

 

 

He finds empty roads some nights, less frequent than he used to, and drives as recklessly as ever with blood boiling in his veins- but doesn’t pull the steering wheel. 

 

-

 

(wherever they go there are always some leaves that whisper their names as they walk by in a language etched on one side of a dream-thing wooden box)

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i didn’t read trk but i read somewhere that apparently gansey lives?? and adam?? i love them but i honestly thought they would die. gosh, i almost didn’t publish this. it's here nevertheless, so..


End file.
